Exhibitions / Portraits en parures végétales — Angers
Portraits en parures végétales
Maison de l'Environnement, Angers — April–September 2026
Portraits en parures végétales
Thirty large-format portraits by Katherine Roumanoff inhabited the Esplanade du Lac de Maine, in front of the Maison de l'Environnement in Angers.
Installed outdoors, visible at all hours and under every light, these feminine figures were adorned with foliage, flowers and intertwined branches.
Each portrait was paired with a text by botanist Pascal Lacroix. The plant was not treated as mere décor, but as a language, a memory and a life force.
The repurposed fabrics, themselves carrying stories, cultures and craftsmanship, met the plant world in the same attentiveness to what persists, transforms and is reborn.
Floral motifs, trees of life, palmettes and arabesques bear witness to the place nature has always held in the decorative arts and textile creation. By cutting and assembling them, Katherine Roumanoff brings forth faces that seem to extend the living world.
Conceived as a dialogue between art and botany, this exhibition was the artist's first institutional commission.
Outdoor view of the exhibition
Histoires textiles — installation shown alongside
Inside the Maison de l'Environnement, the Histoires textiles exhibition extended this reflection on reuse and our relationship to clothing.
Katherine Roumanoff's work was in dialogue there with that of the association L'Âme du fil, committed to a more responsible fashion.
Four wardrobes, four installations and four stories gave a voice to fabrics and garments. A little grey dress told how its cloth had first been a pair of trousers. A moth-eaten sweater discovered that mending could give it a new life. A torn sweatshirt turned its wound into embroidery. Discarded ties recalled their origin and their journey through history.
These stories recalled that a garment is never a neutral material. It carries gestures, uses, memories, transformations and craft.
Mending can mean making the wound invisible. But one can also choose a thread that stands out, add a patch, embroider a motif, and turn the scar into a signature.
Histoires textiles thus invited a different way of looking at what we wear, keep, repair or discard. Concepts, stories and staging: Katherine Roumanoff.
Maison de l'Environnement — Angers, France
Esplanade du Lac de Maine
April–September 2026 — Outdoor exhibition and indoor installation.